The present invention relates to generally to a hopper for continuously and automatically drawing out tires through a water tank and feeding them, and more particularly to a hopper which can continuously draw out waste rubber tires through a water tank and quantitatively supply the tires to a thermal-decomposing furnace or a chipper for reusing the tires as fuel and the like.
1. Cross Reference to Related Applications
This application is related to copending application Ser. No. 877,323 filed July 23, 1986, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,825 copending application Ser. No. 900,365 filed Aug. 26, 1986 now abandoned and copending application Ser. No. 932,146 filed Nov. 17, 1986 now abandoned.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the recent remarkable increase in the amount of generation of waste rubber tires resulting from the rapid development of the automotive industry, the regeneration and appropriate treatment of these waste tires becomes significant in the areas of resource-saving, energy-saving and preservation of the environment.
With these social needs, researches of regeneration of the waste tires and their industrialization have become more and more active. For example, an apparatus for thermal-decomposing waste rubber tires is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Nos. 74993/72; 16396/79; 16397/79; and 143806/81.
In the case where the tires are treated in large quantities in a large-sized tire thermal-decomposing furnace or chipper, such a conventional, laborious handworking process is very disadvantageous from a cost standpoint as well as the necessity of continuously feeding the waste tires in large quantities.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved automatic type of hopper for continuously drawing out randomly loaded tires which can continuously and quantitatively draw out the tires through a water tank and feed the tires to a succeeding apparatus for treating them, and therefore can save labor.
This and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention may be more clearly understood and appreciated from a view of the following detailed description of the disclosed embodiments and by reference to the appended drawings and claims.